RUNWAY by Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark

The man’s daughter was crying at the dinner table, smearing black eye makeup across her red cheeks. She wasn’t eating her asparagus and had refused chicken or bread. “I’m tired of looking like this,” she said.
“Like what?” the man’s wife asked.
“Ugly,” his daughter said.
His wife said, “You are not.”
“I am,” she said. “Stop lying.” And she looked to the man for help.
“You’re not ugly,” he said quietly.
“You both lie,” his daughter observed.
“I think you’re ugly,” offered the man’s son from across the table.
“Thank you,” his daughter said with real gratitude. “Thank you for telling the truth.”
“You’re welcome,” the boy replied.
The man’s wife gave the man a look that meant: “Do something.” She was a beautiful woman, his wife. Her eyes were large and far apart; she had a pert nose and a delicate body. But his daughter did not look like his wife. His daughter looked like him.
He was not ugly – maybe goofy-looking, at worst. Coarse hair sprouted freely from his head and arms; he had a large nose and heavy, hound-like jowls. But despite his goofiness, women had always responded kindly to his appearance. It helped that he was tall. He liked to think he had a calming effect on women but also considered the possibility that his size made them afraid. For this reason, he went out of his way to be gentle, to smile often and speak softly, which made women like him even more.
His daughter, though, was a thirteen-year-old girl. She was not helped by being large or hairy. She was not assisted in her goofiness.
“You’re an attractive person,” he told her, and everyone at the table stared, astounded by the insufficiency of his words.
“Did something happen?” asked the man’s wife, looking back at the girl.
His daughter shook her head.
His son explained, “All her friends are prettier.”
“You’re not helping,” he told his son.
“He is,” his daughter said. “He’s telling the truth.”
The boy grinned, revealing a small, dark gap where a front tooth had been. Their dentist loved the boy’s teeth. She claimed well-spaced baby teeth foretold a future free of braces. The man’s daughter’s baby teeth had been as crowded as barnacles, and her mouth was now the battleground for an expensive orthodontic war. The latest defense was a bulky pink retainer, which sat beside her dinner plate slick with spit.
“What brought this on?” asked the man’s wife, who’d never needed braces.
A stream of snot trailed from his daughter’s nose, which she didn’t bother to wipe. “Nothing. Just the usual stuff that happens to ugly girls.”
His wife laughed, and the room felt brighter. He wondered if he was taking the conversation too seriously. It was silly, after all. Their daughter wasn’t deformed. They’d given her all her body parts, two eyes, a mouth and nose.
“And what’s the usual stuff that happens to ugly girls?” his wife asked, shooting him a smile.
“That proves it,” his daughter said.
“Proves what?” His wife shook her head, and her tiny earrings caught the kitchen light. Her expression was one the man associated with pretty women, a look of impatience and mystification. Plain women had more time to listen, more desire to understand.
“It proves you’re beautiful,” said his daughter. “That’s why you don’t know.”
His wife laughed again. He felt less sure, this time, about her laughter. His daughter was being very serious.
“I wasn’t attractive at your age,” his wife lied.
“Yeah you were,” said the boy through a mouthful of chicken. “I’ve seen pictures.”
“Drink your milk,” she told him.
“But I don’t like milk,” he appealed to the whole table. This not-liking-milk thing was new, but he’d persisted in it. He was creating a decisive set of preferences, independent from what they’d taught him.
“Just gulp it down,” the man told his son. “It’ll strengthen your bones.”
“But casts are cool.”
“He’s right,” their daughter resumed. “You were beautiful. I wish I looked like you.”
“No one thinks they’re attractive at your age,” said his wife, finishing her last sip of wine. She allowed herself one glass of white wine per night.
“What gauge are you using for attractiveness?” the man asked suddenly, feeling he was onto something.
“Those stupid beauty magazines,” his wife said. “She should stop reading those.”
The man nodded but didn’t feel as sure. While the beauty magazines were silly and superficial, perhaps they could be helpful in some ways. They might give his daughter tips, for instance, to make her beauty more apparent. Because she did possess a certain beauty, in her laugh and voice and eyes. It was a beauty that came in flashes, like a hummingbird, never still enough to examine closely. His wife’s beauty was different. It shone all over her, like a glaze.
“It’s not magazines,” his daughter said. “It’s reality.” She pushed her plate away and put her face in her hands.
“Something happened,” his wife said.
His daughter shook her head in her hands.
“She’s just ugly,” interpreted his son. “That’s all.”
“Cut it out,” said his wife.
“You have a deep beauty,” the man observed.
His daughter lifted her tear-streaked face. “What does that mean?”
“Not like Barbie dolls,” he explained. “Or fashion models or whatever boys get off on in junior high. But it’s real.”
“Oh, come on,” his daughter said.
“Get off.” His son giggled.
“Thirteen-year-old boys are stupid,” the man insisted. “They don’t know what beauty is.”
“Everyone knows what beauty is,” said his daughter.
His son asked to be excused.
“You haven’t drunk your milk.”
“Let him go,” his daughter said.
The boy rose, leaving his plate and glass on the table. Within a minute, the sound of video game gunfire drifted in from the living room.
“Deep beauty,” mimicked his daughter. “Why don’t you just call it inner beauty?”
“What’s wrong with inner beauty?” his wife wanted to know.
“Can we agree, then?” asked his daughter. “That I have inner beauty but not outer beauty?”
“They’re related,” the man argued.
“Bullshit,” said his daughter.
“Hey,” said his wife.
“You,” his daughter accused his wife, “are beautiful. And you” –  she pointed at the man – “love her because she’s beautiful.”
“That’s not why,” his wife claimed.
“It’s one of the reasons,” he acknowledged.
His wife gave him a look.
“Just one of the reasons,” he clarified. “It wouldn’t have been enough by itself.”
“But would you say,” pressed his daughter as if they were in court, “that beauty’s what attracted you to her?”
Cornered, he looked at his wife.
“Is this about a boy?” she asked.
His daughter rolled her eyes. “Fine, sure. It’s about a boy. A thousand boys.”
“A thousand boys?” repeated his wife. Oh, his beautiful wife.
“A million boys,” said their daughter. “A billion boys.”
“Okay,” the man said.
“I don’t get it,” said his wife.
“You wouldn’t,” said his daughter.
His wife’s face hardened, as it did when she felt finished. She had an admirably low threshold for mistreatment. She clapped her hands together and said, “Why don’t we talk about this when you’re calmer?” Then she got up from the table, leaving both them and the dishes.
The man’s daughter looked at him, making his heart hurt. He reached a hand across the table. He could hear his wife and son in the living room, beginning bedtime negotiations. His daughter pulled her hand away.
“Ice cream?” he tried. This was their special thing. No one in the house liked ice cream as much as they did.
His daughter exhaled a sad sound. “Do you know the calories in that?” When he didn’t respond, she pushed her chair away from the table and pounded up the stairs. She didn’t clear her dishes, either, but tonight he felt she had the best excuse.
The man sat alone for a while, looking out the window onto the backyard. His son had been firing a pellet gun at the fence, littering the wood with pockmarks deep enough to see in the garage light. He couldn’t remember telling his son this was allowed.
He rose and gathered the plates of half-eaten chicken breast and asparagus stubs. His wife would want him to wrap the leftover meat in tinfoil, save it for sandwiches. He scraped it all into the trash, pushing the growing mound down with an overturned plate.
He stacked the dishes in the sink and ran the faucet briefly over them. Then he took a pint of chocolate ice cream from the freezer and a bowl from the cabinet. On second thought, he returned the bowl and began spooning the ice cream directly into his mouth.
He was getting angry. He wished there were a specific boy, so he’d have someone to get angry at. Maybe his daughter was a little scruffy now, a little heavy, but adolescence was an awkward age. She was still the girl with the clear laugh and shy smile, the girl who’d tried to rescue a lifeless seagull tangled in plastic rings at the shore. She saved up her allowance every year so she could buy the man and his wife elaborate Christmas gifts: fancy kitchen knives, jewelry, an overpriced bottle of cologne . . .
And she was smart. Listen to the way she argued. She’d backed both the man and his wife into a corner, which wasn’t easy to do. She could be on the debate team, arguing politics instead of appearances. Why didn’t he mention her intelligence? Did she care?
Thirteen-year-old boys were stupid. He tried to imagine himself at thirteen, viewing his daughter through thirteen-year-old eyes, but that felt vulgar. Thirteen-year-old boys were also vulgar.
The man should have seen this coming, been more prepared. His daughter had his face, his hair, his physique; people said she was his spitting image. It flattered him when she was younger, but he’d always assumed she’d morph into a younger version of her mother, somehow, when she hit puberty.
Instead, she was morphing into a goof, like him. Except she was a girl.
How could he help her; what could he do? He didn’t even care what the world thought of her, as long as she felt lovely inside. The man, for instance, had a mental image of himself, which blurred his flaws and highlighted his better features so that, in his mind, he looked a little like Cary Grant. This mental image didn’t match the one he saw in photographs, but it worked. He presented it to the world, and the world responded as if it were real. Maybe his daughter could do something similar with her mind?
The ice cream was becoming soup. It didn’t taste as good without his daughter. He returned the container to the freezer and made his way upstairs. A video game jingle wafted from his son’s room, punctuated by digital chimes. His daughter’s door was closed.
The man knocked.
“What,” said his daughter in a thick voice.
“Open up,” he said. “I want to take you somewhere.”
He didn’t know where. Those were just the first words that came to mind. If he could snap his fingers and conjure a young suitor with a kind heart and a clean driving record, he would have done this instead. But the man and his Volvo would have to do.
After a minute, his daughter opened the door. “Where?” she asked, sniffling.

Outside, the air smelled like chimney smoke and distant snow. The sky was pink. The man and his daughter hurried to the car, exhaling opaque breaths. He turned up the heat as far as it would go and pulled slowly away from the curb.
His daughter fiddled with the radio. She flipped past the news, a pop song, a commercial, another pop song, and landed on the oldies station, which was playing “Last Kiss.” She sat back, satisfied.
“Where are we going?” she asked again.
“Just a drive,” he told her.
“I thought you wanted to take me somewhere.”
“I do,” he said. “On a drive.”
He steered the car down the quiet streets of their neighborhood, past the boring brick houses with illuminated windows, past the darkened elementary and high schools, through the naked woods and onto the concrete bridge. The river wore a membrane of ice. The radio played old love songs, and his daughter looked out the window in silence. Crying had relaxed her face somehow, leaving it less self-aware. The smeared eye makeup had been wiped away; she must have looked in a mirror.
The man took the exit for the airport. Once, before the children were born, he’d taken his wife here on a date. They’d parked near the runway and sat on the hood of the car, watching planes take off and land. That was springtime, much warmer than tonight.
The edge of the parking lot was separated from the runway by a chain-link fence. The man nosed the car as close to it as possible and switched off the engine, interrupting an advertisement for weight loss tablets.
“I wish we were really getting on a plane,” said his daughter.
“Yeah?” he said. “Where would we go?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
They got out of the car. The man’s daughter watched as he climbed clumsily onto the hood. Climbing the Volvo was not behavior he typically encouraged. “It’s okay,” he said, patting the warm metal beside him.
His daughter backed herself slowly onto the car until her heels were resting on the bumper. He scooted down and put his arm around her. Her puffy jacket was stained yellow in places with age. Under his arm, it felt like an oversized marshmallow, his daughter barely palpable beneath it.
A plane appeared at the far end of the runway, fixing them with its impenetrable gaze. The stabilizers rose up from behind the cockpit like a three-pronged crown. The engines moaned, and the heavy body began to move down the runway toward them. It seemed like it was going much too slow. His daughter tensed under his arm.
Just before it hit the fence, the plane came off the ground. It wobbled and shook, useless wheels dangling, but it did not lose altitude. It climbed the air above their heads, filling the sky with its behemoth belly. The man squeezed his daughter through her marshmallow jacket and watched as she craned her neck to follow.

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Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark’s stories have appeared in Necessary Fiction, The Washington Post, Smokelong Quarterly, and Nimrod.